Neil Young

In 1978, Nils Lofgren was a well-regarded but vaguely underperforming singer and guitarist. His former band, Grin, had been a disappointment, and he was in between the gigs that would come to define him: A few years previous, he had been a member of Crazy Horse, and had played on some of their most iconic recordings with Neil Young. A few years later, he would join Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band during its “Born in the USA” boom era.

But in 1978, Lofgren was struggling. He was recording a solo album, “Nils,” with producer Bob Ezrin. He had music written, but couldn’t get the lyrics right. Ezrin suggested that Lofgren meet his friend, Lou Reed. “I thought to myself, ‘He’s not...

Related "Neil Young" Articles

In 1978, Nils Lofgren was a well-regarded but vaguely underperforming singer and guitarist. His former band, Grin, had been a disappointment, and he was in between the gigs that would come to define him: A few years previous, he had been a member of Crazy...

For the past several months, I’ve been playing a parlor game with my mostly liberal friends and family. If you had 15 minutes alone with Donald Trump, what would you say or do?
Some people reply that they’d try to persuade him to alter his political...

The down side of being at the cutting edge is that a sharper one is just around the corner — something Neil Young discovered almost before he released his technologically advanced 2009 career retrospective box set “Neil Young Archive, Vol. 1.”
That...

Singer, songwriter and activist Pegi Young, who co-founded the Bridge School in Northern California for severely disabled students and their families with her ex-husband, rock musician Neil Young, and went on to help create the annual fundraising concerts...

The Al Larson Prairie Center for the Arts welcomes world-renowned guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli in "A Centennial Celebration of Nat King Cole" on Sunday, January 13 at 7pm.
Pizzarelli has established himself as a prime contemporary...

It didn't take long for Donald Trump to hit the first bump of what's sure to be a long road to reach the White House.
The New York real estate mogul arrived on stage at his campaign kickoff announcement Tuesday as the sounds of Neil Young's "Rockin' In...

It was a Valentine's Day show, so of course Syd Straw began her performance at City Winery Thursday with a pair of songs about death. "Unraveling," written for her father while he was dying of lung cancer, found Straw calling out to heaven as she strummed...

Here are my favorite concerts from 2012:
1. Neutral Milk Hotel at Athenaeum Theatre, Feb. 6: After releasing two acclaimed albums in the ‘90s, Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum drifted away for more than a decade. His return stacked up as an event, and he...

Years ago when I was a student at Northwestern University, a handful of executives at America Online came to my class and explained that you, I and everyone we know would soon find ourselves pleasantly stranded on "information islands." We nodded,...

Inevitably this holiday season, my mom will tick through her shopping list and say with a sigh, "Your dad wants a book." Since I was a kid, my mom has teased my dad about the predictablity of this ritual, which usually involves the purchase of a...

HARDCOVER FICTION1. "The Panther" by Nelson DeMille (Grand Central, $27.99). Anti-Terrorist Task Force agent John Corey is sent to Yemen to track down The Panther, one of the terrorists behind the USS Cole bombings. Last week: —2. "The Casual Vacancy"...

HARDCOVER FICTION1. "The Casual Vacancy" by J.K. Rowling (Little, Brown, $35). A small English town is rattled by the unexpected death of an elected official. Last week: —2. "Winter of the World" by Ken Follett (Dutton, $36). The second historical epic in...

You love at least one album. It is a perfect album that makes your toe tap and your heart sing (your head, too). How can something sound so right from beginning to end? So made just for you? In that melding of melody and verve is an album you feel,...

If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, as Elvis Costello and others have sneered, then what does that make reading about music? Well, fun, for starters. Although Bowker Market Research reports that music books have steadily comprised...

What do you expect from a rock star? I just closed the back cover of Neil Young's “Waging Heavy Peace,” his big anticipated memoir (of sorts), clocking in at 500 pages (75 shy of the rock star-memoir mountain peak established by Keith Richards' “Life”);...

The tips collected at Kerry Wood’s charity event at Harry Caray’s Tavern at Navy Pier Friday went straight to the Wood Family Foundation, which might explain why the Cubs and Bears players working the “Woody’s Winter Warm-up” benefit seemed...

The first screening of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" came just weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11. The movie had been in the works for years, the first in a trilogy based on novels that had been written decades earlier, of course,...